Tag Archives: Warwick Davis

Dutifully slapped together and rushed out the door in an attempt to satisfy the allegedly ravenous fans of the firstmovie (review here), Leprechaun 2 was clumsily plopped onto shelves way back in 1994, exactly one year and three months after the release of the original. It’s a good thing too, that Ewok money can’t pay Warwick Davis’ mortgage forever.

“Can we do like, 11 sequels to Willow? For fucks sake, I got full sized bills!!”

The plot-Leprechaun 2 is Leprechaun at his rapiest. The story concerns our little green fuck face and his quest to land a human bride, which he then plans to impregnate and surgically alter, so as to make her appear more Leprechaun like. Why not just date Leprechaun women in the first place? I really don’t know. Maybe there aren’t any. I have no idea how their system works, all I know is that it must be stopped, because it’s already hard enough to meet people in this day and age, we don’t need any percentage of our dating population being kidnapped and mutilated by fucking Leprechauns. Why isn’t Donald Trump working on a wall to separate us from the faerie kingdom? I wish I had the answers, folks, but I do not.

So we start out 1000 years ago in Ireland, on St. Patrick’s Day, which also happens to be Lep’s birthday. What a coincidence! And this is no ordinary birthday, our boy is turning the big one triple zero! To mark the momentous occasion, Leprechaun and his badly abused human slave are out to bamboozle a fair maiden into the loathsome and all binding contract that is matrimony using a time honored tradition of making her sneeze three times. If she sneezes thrice and no one says “God bless you,” her mind, body and soul belong to the Leprechaun, which is a fucked up and nonsensical rule. Even so, Lep’s human slave is happy to participate in the capture of his master’s bride to be, because he’s been promised his freedom once Lep ties the knot- but he suddenly has a change of heart when he learns that the apple of the Leprechaun’s beady little eye is none other than his own daughter, who is hot as hell and just so happens to sneeze pretty often. Shit! That tricky little Leprechaun. Predictably, the slave dude betrays his master and ruins his plan to entrap his bride, an act of cockblockary that costs him his life, and forces Lep to postpone his wedding a full one thousand years, because a Leprechaun is apparently subject to a lot of stupid rules.

So, we fast forward ten centuries to present day (Well- 1994. It WAS present day), and Lep is once again on the prowl to find lady love, this time in twentieth century America. Good luck, asshole. This time he sets his sights on the equally hot descendant of his previous potentially kidnapee, an empty-headed, flinty voiced babe named Bridget, who is already in the early stages of courtship with some bland dumbass called Cody. Cody sucks, folks. He sucks hard. He just doesn’t bring anything to the table, and that’s a problem for Leprechaun 2, because he’s also our protagonist, and nobody in the world would be sad to watch him die gruesomely. On the other end of the spectrum, however, we have Morty, Cody’s money grubbing, alcoholic con-man mentor, who is far and away the best and most enjoyable character in the film. But again, he’s a secondary character, and for most of the film, we’re stuck with fucking Cody.

So, anyway. Lep shows up, he rhymes a lot, Brigitte is kidnapped, and Cody and Morty spring into action to launch an elaborate scheme to somehow rescue Bridgitte, and, if possible, score some of that sweet, sweet Leprechaun treasure. It’s a horror film franchise with a 99% genetic match to a fucking cereal commercial.

The Lucky Charms commercial filmed on Lucky’s 1000th birthday is going to go down very, very differently.

So, the upside here is that there’s actually an idea behind Leprechaun 2’s plot- this is a good, old fashioned cautionary tale against the destructive powers of greed. Lep is greedy, Morty is greedy, Cody has to learn not to be greedy, and if you’re greedy, it doesn’t end well for you. That’s all well and good. Problems pop up, however, when you factor in how the character of Bridgitte is handled- she’s basically immediately downgraded to being an object that men fight over for the entire film. She could just as easily be a 20 dollar bill, or a really great sandwich. To the ultra sensitive eyes of the Millennial, this shit is like, PRIME trigger fuel, but back in ’94, absolutely zero fucks were given. Also, we had better music, and the Sega Genesis. It was an awesome time to be alive.

Another mark against Leprechaun 2 is that ALL the actors are total garbage, except, of course, for Mr. Warwick Davis, and Sandy Baron, who plays Morty. Actually, strike that, Tony Cox has a small role in this one, too- you might remember him from Bad Santa. Cox is a fine actor in his own right, but he doesn’t get much of an opportunity to shine in Leprechaun 2. What he does get to do is to play an integral role in the single most bizarre and disturbing men’s restroom scene I have ever seen this side of No Holds Barred (Review Here).

This isn’t a classic, but by all objective criteria, this is a much better movie than the first. It’s less childish, never as bland, and it features quite a few memorable scenes. Or at least I thought it did. When I rewatched it just now for the purpose of writing this review, I didn’t actually remember ever having seen any of these so called “memorable sequences” ever before, except for one; the one wherein Leprechaun uses his magical illusion powers to make one of Brigitte’s more date-rapey suitors believe he is slowly moving in to motorboat her bare chest, when in actuality, he’s gently ramming his face into the whirling blade of an upturned lawn mower. That was pretty awesome. Later, Lep uses his illusion powers to make out with Cody, though, so that mostly negates the coolness of the lawnmower kill.

Still, it’s mostly good. The one thing this movie has working against it in comparison to the first film is that this is fucking Leprechaun 2. That’s a pretty fatal flaw. With the first film, you could throw that puppy on for an annual “leave it on in the background” type deal at a St. Patrick’s Day party, and people might be onboard with it, but nobody puts on Leprechaun 2 every year. Your friends would just look at you like you were a fucking idiot… and let’s face it… you might be!

Holiday-themed slasher films are a proud tradition for horror fans, and when it comes to larger than life, murderous, movie-maniacs, Warwick Davis in a green jacket sounds like about as logical a choice as any, to me. Evidently, the rest of the world thought so too, because it was with open arms that the we, as a global, human family, first welcomed Leprechaun into our lives way back in the naive, carefree days of 1993. The movie was a relative success, and in the years that followed, we ended up with way more sequels than we wanted, needed, or asked for. It’s the American way. I’ve also heard many people claim that an annual re-watching of Leprechaun has become a cherished St. Patrick’s Day tradition in some social circles, so certainly we can declare this whimsical horror jam to be a true classic, right?

Wrong, Leprechauntotally and completely fucking sucks. This is a terrible movie.

Come at me, bro.

THE PLOT- While renovating an old farmhouse, a group of unlikable morons inadvertently frees a malicious leprechaun, who had been trapped on the property in an old trunk. This gnarly little fairy creature proceeds to kill his way through the local population on a murderous, limerick-laiden rampage, with the intention of finding his much cherished and now stolen pot of gold. Also, none of our main characters die, which is a shame because every single one of them suck, and I wish more than anything that I could watch them breath their last, and know that they are finally gone forever.

We have a lot of ground to cover with this stinker, so I’mma dive right in.

I guess it’s not really the fact that Leprechaun sucks that is the problem, hell, tons of my favorite movies completely suck, especially in this genre. It’s more an issue of HOW Leprechaun chose to suck. This flick is super bipolar, it switches abruptly between more or less enjoyable sequences where Warwick Davis kills people or lurks around in the shadows, and terrible, boring sequences which last forever and manage to out bland Admiral Blandy McBlanderson of the Planet Blandtron. For real, we get the most boring, artless photography imaginable, a lame story, embarrassing dialogue, and characters nobody could possibly care about. Leprechaun feels like an R rated children’s movie. This stuff is the opiate of the ignorant.

The music is maybe the worst part of the whole shebang. The score is all shitty, Casio music which sounds like a mix of PBS standbys and what you’d see in one of Full Moon’s more mediocre productions. Here, in Leprechaun, this horrible music plays over the entire length of the picture, and any film, be it Taxi Driveror The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Movie,would instantly tank and remain forever banished to the realm of cinema’s most heinous rejects if they were shackled to a score this overbearingly fuck-awful. Luckily, however, this isn’t a situation where the music spoils a perfectly good film, because every other aspect of Leprechaun sucks with equal ferocity as well. Director Mark Jones captures the suspense and drama of the film’s scattered “horror” sequences with the sort of constant menace you might expect from an episode of Loony Tunes, except not as funny… And Leprechaun WANTS to be funny. Trust me, it’s not. This film just flat out sucks A to Z, and there’s nothing in here that works.

A legit claim to fame for this groan-fest is that it’s an early on-screen appearance of the now popular actress Jennifer Aniston, but she’s really just here as an outlet for the film to condenscend to women, which is another point that absolutely needs to be brought up; Leprechaun has a very disturbing “That’s cute, now get back in the kitchen” outlook on feminism. Aniston’s character does nothing but complain, fawn over dudes, and scream at spiders for the entire fucking movie. Really, if you twisted my arm and demanded I say one nice thing about Leprechaun’s treatment of this actress, I guess it would be that she’s really not sexualized all that much. No nude scenes, no wet t-shirts, no butt close ups (I’m looking at you Tobe Hooper,) so it COULD be much more exploitative… But she’s still really, really awful, and more than anything else, this whole thing is pretty telling of a harsh, deep seeded sexism, which hangs over every second of Leprechaun’s unforgivably long run time.

The other characters in the film aren’t a hell of a lot better, either. We spend a lot of time with an obnoxious, smart ass kid named Alex, and Ozzy, a mentally retarded man that Alex hangs out with. Even though Alex is like, nine, and knows nothing about the world around him, he seems to be a few notches above Jenifer Anniston in the groups social pecking order. Anniston and Ozzy, however, are more or less on the same level. Regardless, every single moment with those two is about as pleasant as a handjob from Edward Scissorhands. It’s beyond reason, I cannot rationalize why any human being would write a script like this. Firstly, that kid is just an annoying little shit, someone needs to tell him to shut the fuck up when the adults are talking. As for Ozzy, I’ve not seen an adult actor demean themselves to this extreme a degree since Dom Deluise REALLY started slumming it (see Going Bananasfor an adequate example of this. jk, don’t ever see Going Bananas. Ever.) It’s basically an insult to the audience that this is our movie and these are our characters. Why did we accept this?!

The only times that Leprechaun feels watchable are during the its adequately imaginative kill scenes. Lep does do some fun stuff, even if he is really is just a squat, Irish, Freddy Kruger rip off. The character does have some potential, and Davis does a good job here. In fact, many of the Leprechaun sequels actually suck much, much less than this first outing, if you really wanted this movie to work, all is not lost, and you won’t have to wait long for a drastically improved sequel. I would just skip this thing if I was you, it’s flat out shitty, and most likely, I’ll never watch Leprechaun again.

…But people like this movie! I don’t know, I guess there is a good chunk of horror fandom that will watch just about anything… Maybe that in and of itself accounts for most of the Lep-Love out there in the world, but I have a different theory…. Bare with me; since Leprechaun is a movie which, as stated above, is often enjoyed annually during St. Patrick’s Day, I wonder if it’s a safe assumption that, by the time they hit play on the DVD player, most of the returning audience is already fully hammered, and possibly not even paying attention… I’m sure that could help make this thing more bearable. Aside from that, I theorize that 100% of Leprechaun’s remaining supporters fall into one of two categories;
1. Nostalgia addicts, people who are happy to overlook glaring inadequacies of literally anything that reminds them of a happier, simple time…OR2. …Warwick Davis. Ever the self promoter, Warwick Davis is more than happy to tell you about how great this movie is. Homeboy left the franchise kicking and screaming.

My official take: More like SUCK of the Irish! (zing!) Leprechaun totally blows.